Yeah, no, I’m not IN the batcave yet. STILL waiting for SOMEONE to vacuum up bug carcasses and to take preventative measures that I will not be sitting there grading when something multi-legged, hairy, with little buggy creepy fangs climbs up my legs. It won’t be pretty. That I promise.
Well, it was an interesting weekend, to be sure. I have a short time to post because then I need to go shower, get dressed, and take #1 son to the police department to get his police report and then to college to go buy his books. Then, we need to come home so that I can go to the laundrymat and WASH my nice comforter (because my washing machine can’t take a queen-size anything) to remove CAT PUKE from it.
Actually, it was like 2am Saturday when I heard this sound coming from between my husband and myself… it sounded like the cat licking himself… but quickly it turned into chaos as he THREW UP an orange-colored hair log and various stomach biles onto my comforter. I jumped up and switched on the light and my husband fell out of bed, scrambling for a tissue box, while the cat ran away, not to return until this morning (from our bed).
It was stomach-churning gross… at 2am… while I was dead asleep. Worse than a kid with the dry-heaves waking me up from a sound sleep… informing me, as he towers over my face, that he feels like puking.
We went to my inlaws’ yesterday for a birthday dinner. No “Eye-talian” comments were being thrown around (interesting– for people who mock Italians ruthlessly, they sure do eat a lot of Italian FOOD)… my mil turned to labeling people.
*sighs*
A relative’s son is mentally challenged. My guess is that he is not functionally retarded as his mental state is that of a child… even though he’s a man… because simple tasks are difficult for him. I get it, I do.
Then, she started on his sister… a rebellious (pretty) girl with a learning disability that is not distinguishable to the untrained eye. “She can’t add or spell, she’s handicapped,” my mil stated as though she knows what the hell she’s talking about. Now, if that were MY kid, I’d be eff’g pissed that she boxed my kid into an unfair label. So, I corrected her, “Actually, not knowing her true classification, I’d say she isn’t handicapped, but learning disabled.”
“Yeah, that’s what I said, handicapped.”
I was tempted, for a mere minute, to bang my head on the table and stick a fork in my eye.
“No, being handicapped is different. She’s fully functional, except she has difficulties in math and spelling.”
She is. She graduated high school, and tried her hand at college, but dropped out so she could stay at home and take care of her brother while mom works (their dad died several years ago).
I’m sorry, I am sensitive when people start putting ALL people with issues into a neat little box called, “handicapped.”
“My brother was ADD and he had dyslexia, but he wasn’t handicapped. The state referred to him as “learning impaired.” And, that was way back in the early-to-mid 1980s. Today, he’d still be learning impaired, learning disabled, or LD.
“Oh, but he could add, right?”
No. He was in special ed classes until the year before he died. He could add, but numbers and letters pretended to impersonate each other and his brain synops didn’t cooperate with what was on the paper in front of him. That, and he climbed the walls, trees, buildings, and other vertical structures at random…
I just bit my tongue and endured another hour of her stating that this and that makes someone handicapped. Yeah, sure, in the 1950s… but not in 2009.
That’s the problem, you know… too many people are being classified with learning disorders… my son included (#1)… and it makes me wonder… how or why they are how and why they are and what did *I* do to contribute to this cycle.
The developmental doctor said that it’s hereditary. My brother was LD and SD is probably LD (though, I personally would consider HIM handicapped)… and my doctor said I’m struggling with adult ADD.
So, somehow, my inability to focus (oh its a problem alright), has been passed on to at least one (possibility of 2) son(s).
FUN-O…
Anyway…
Not to mention, I had to listen to my husband’s cousin on Friday list the reasons why we can’t move away from NJ/PA area:
1. She will lose her carpenter
2. She will lose her carpenter
3. She will lose her carpenter
*sighs*
She’ll find another, that I promise…
Needless to say, my goal today, in the midst of crazy-zaniness… is to drive by the accident scene and pull into the parking lot, and look for the car my son hit.
It shouldn’t be hard… a large SUV like mine, with beige paint (some of which was imbedded into my son’s hood)… and a little nic under the bumper by the tailpipe. I haven’t decided what to do next, but if I had no self-control and was a sociopath-handicapped person, I’d smash her windshield with a bat.
But, I’m respectible… and relatively calm (amazing enough). I harbor no ill-will towards the (dumb eff’g) woman who could’ve killed my son with her (mindless and attention-less) driving.
Ok, off to shower…
*writes on list of things to do… bring bat*
Posted by l'empress on August 10, 2009 at 12:44 pm
If onlly I could convey how much I *hate* the practice of putting people into any kind of boxes. I was on that this morning, about an LD kid who, at six, can drive better than I could at 36. (Despite my completion of the requisite 16 years of formal education.)
I was amused by my daughter’s comment that lots of people go to tanning parlors, including those who wouldn’t want people of color — any color — moving into their neighborhood.
However, your husband’s cousin sounds to me as if she has a learning problem of some sort. (snark, snark)
Posted by G on August 10, 2009 at 1:37 pm
My motherinlaw made the “handicapped” comment, her niece (my husband’s cousin) made the “fat” comment. They’re blood-related the two of them… so, idiocy runs deep at times, I’m guessing.